When Michael Dell steps off the stage from delivering the opening keynote at Dell EMC World 2016 in Austin on Wednesday, he’ll be followed by David Goulden, the new president of Dell Technologies Inc.’s infrastructure solutions group and formerly a top executive at EMC.

That juxtaposition will carry much symbolic significance. Ever since Dell announced its takeover bid for EMC a year ago, Dell executives have bent over backwards to stress that they will preserve the best of EMC’s technology, people and practices. The first gathering of users since the deal closed in August will be an opportunity to show that the company is true to its word. (* Disclosure below.)

Michael Dell has chosen to focus his opening remarks on the Internet of Things a market that presents enticing new opportunities to combine Dell’s traditional strengths in servers with the cloud and big data assets it picked up with the acquisitions of EMC and its federated companies that include Pivotal Software Inc., Virtustream Inc. and RSA Security LLC. “We have hundreds of IoT projects going within our company,” Dell told SiliconANGLE’s John Furrier and Wikibon analyst Stu Miniman in an interview on theCUBE at the recent VMworld conference (Wikibon is a sister company to SiliconANGLE).

First and foremost, though, Dell needs to reassure EMC customers that their investments are safe and that the future roadmap includes EMC technology. “Data storage touches a wide range of sensitive points and issues, and customers need to know they’re in good hands,” said Charles King, president and principal analyst at Pund-IT Inc.

Customers need to hear “that the merger is largely done, that plans have solidified and can be depended upon, and that no customers will be left in the lurch as a result,” said Rob Enderle, chief analyst at Enderle Group Inc.

Enterprise customers will be a particularly important constituency for the Dell EMC division of Dell Technologies to covet since, “over the past half-decade Dell has focused much of its energy on the mid-market,” King said. “The acquisition will certainly open some new doors, but many enterprise customers are likely to need convincing that Dell EMC is up to the task.”

Minimal layoffs

The large layoffs and divestitures that often characterize big leveraged buyouts have so far not happened at Dell Technologies. The company did announce plans to cut about 3,000 jobs from EMC ranks to reduce operating expenses and to sell EMC’s Enterprise Content Division shortly after the acquisition closed, but the layoffs amount to only a little more than two percent of Dell Technologies’ 140,000 employees.

Still, in a market where infrastructure vendors such as IBM and Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Co. have been bleeding people for years amid downward-spiraling revenues, any workforce reductions are likely to raise concern. Dell needs to reassure customers that “their reason for taking both companies private in the first place was largely to avoid such a spiral and that it has reduced much, if not all, of the risks associated with mergers of this scale,” Enderle said.

“I’m comfortable with the strategy that Dell Technologies has,” said Miniman in a video interview shortly after the acquisition closed. “There are so many pieces that had to go into making this plan. Kudos to them for not having to make any major changes.”

What about cloud?

Customers will also want to hear what strategies the combined company has in mind for VMware Inc., Pivotal and Virtustream, which were the foundation of EMC’s cloud computing strategy. Prior to the acquisition, Dell was satisfied to position itself as an “arms vendor” to cloud providers, drafting off their need for servers and storage. Now that Dell Technologies has a portfolio of cloud platforms of its own, customers want to know what will becomes of it.

“Dell and EMC were very well aligned with their cloud strategy already,” Enderle said. “I doubt anyone is expecting any change here because of the lack of conflicts.” Virtustream is focused on storage and Pivotal on application development, which should keep Dell Technologies out of the crosshairs of the cloud giants.

Michael Dell has been emphatic about the importance of VMware to the combined company’s future, as well as Dell Technologies’ commitment to let Pivotal, Virtustream and RSA operate independently. Asked by Miniman about rumors that Dell Technologies would sell the virtualization leader to help pay down its debt, Dell responded, “Anyone who says that has no clue what they’re talking about. The combined cash flows of Dell, EMC and VMware are many times greater than the debt service. I see in VMware a really strong ecosystem that’s getting stronger.” The blockbuster alliance between VMware and Amazon Web Services Inc. that was announced last week provides evidence that Dell’s arms-dealer strategy can extend to software as well.

“By taking the company private, then adding EMC, Michael Dell has assembled a massive and massively influential IT solutions/services business that isn’t subject to the market-driven pressures that plague other vendors,” said Pund-IT’s King. “You can see other vendors attempting to emulate that strategy.”

Or, as Michael Dell put it in his interview on theCUBE, “We’ve now got the speed and agility of a startup, plus the scale and breadth of a broad ecosystem and access to customers.” Dell EMC World is a chance to prove that to customers.

*Disclosure: SiliconANGLE Media’s theCUBE is a media partner at Dell EMC World. Neither Dell nor other sponsors have editorial influence on content on SiliconANGLE or theCUBE.

Image courtesy Dell Technologies